It is possible for you to earn money from your Joomla website. Having set up a website using the Joomla content management system, you can proceed to set up systems that would enable you to earn money from the site. As long as the Joomla website is ‘live’, and as long as it is receiving some traffic (visitors), there is absolutely no reason as to why you can’t monetize it. That way, you would – at the very least – be in a position to earn the money you need to keep the website running. And on top of that, if you are lucky, you can actually get to a level where the Joomla website brings you a real, steady income.

You could actually be in a position to retire and live comfortably off the earnings from your Joomla websites! In other words, the earnings from the Joomla website may be enough to enable you to quit your day job. Like if, for instance, you work for Lowes — meaning that you have to go through the Mylowes login screen to view your paystubs. Then you set up a Joomla website. And the Joomla website attracts huge enough numbers of visitors (traffic). That may subsequently turn out to be a source of an income that is adequate for you to live on: meaning that you’d be in a position to leave the day job.

Some of the specific ways in which you can monetize your Joomla website include:

By enrolling it for an online advertising program: this would be an arrangement where you are paid every time someone clicks on the ads that are placed on the website. It can be potentially lucrative – especially if your website is one that has many visitors.

By enrolling it for an affiliate marketing program: here, you’d have links (on your Joomla website) to other websites that are selling various products or services. If anyone clicks on those links, and proceeds to buy the stuff that is sold on those other sites, you’d be paid a commission.

By selling stuff directly on the website: here, you turn the Joomla website into an e-commerce platform, enabling you to sell stuff (services or products) directly on the site.

Having managed to build a website using Joomla, the next challenge will be that of getting people to visit it. You will need to keep it in mind that there are millions upon millions of other websites, competing with your site for visitors. You therefore shouldn’t just expect people to start visiting your new Joomla website automatically. On the contrary, you should be ready to work hard, using certain strategies, in order to get more people to visit your new Joomla website. Some of the specific strategies you can use to get more people to visit your new Joomla website include:

Optimizing your Joomla website for the search engines: most of the people who are searching for information online typically start by consulting the search engines. For instance, a person who was recently employed by Walmart may try to use the search engine to access the Wm1 login (WalmartOne login) page. He may, for instance, be doing so with the ultimate objective of logging in, and subsequently being able to access his Walmartone schedule. This shows the extent to which people rely on the search engines, while looking for information on the Internet. Therefore if you can get your new Joomla website to appear on the top of search engine results, you stand a chance to improve the website’s traffic. And what you need to do, to get your Joomla website to the top of search engine results is to optimize it for the search engines — which should be easy enough if the website has good content.

Using social media to draw people into your Joomla website: this is where, for instance, you can get the articles you post on the Joomla website to be shared on Facebook groups and on LinkedIn, while also being retweeted. Meanwhile, you can have the photos you post in the site being shared (with links) on Instagram… All these strategies would serve to get more people to visit the Joomla website.

Using an advertising program to get people into your Joomla website: if, for instance, you are selling something on the Joomla website, you can enroll for an online advertising program (like, for instance, Google Adwords), and through it get more people to visit the site.

Getting your Joomla website listed in online directories: there are people who consult the online directories, while looking for information on the Internet. By getting your Joomla website to be listed in the directories, you stand to get some traffic. Furthermore, having your website listed on the directories can substantially improve the site’s rankings in the search engines.

There are several simple steps you need to follow, if you want to build a website using Joomla.

The first step is that of buying a domain name for the website you will be building using Joomla. So you start by thinking of an ideal domain name for the website you will be building. Then you go ahead to register that domain name. If someone else has already registered the same exact domain name, you will have two options. One is that of registering another ‘almost similar’ domain name. The other option is that of contacting the people who have registered the domain name you desired, to see if they are open to the idea of selling it to you. Oftentimes, these domain names are registered by people who are known as ‘cyber squatters’ — with a view of selling them later to other people who may desire them. Thus, for instance, an opportunistic cyber-squatter may have registered a domain name like, say, www.upsers.com. They would have done so knowing that, at some point, the folks at UPS would require the domain name, for UPSers registration purposes. So you need to be aware of this trend where people register desirable domain names, with a view to sell them later.

The second step is that of signing up for a web hosting plan. Ideally, you should sign up for a web hosting plan that has Joomla as one of the CMSs on offer. This way, you wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of installing Joomla manually. But if you sign up for a web hosting plan that doesn’t have Joomla as one of the CMSs on offer, you would have to install Joomla yourself, and that can be quite trying.

The third step is that of creating the pages that are to constitute the website. In Joomla, the pages are referred to as ‘articles’. So you just click to start a new ‘article’ and proceed to set up the content you desire. Before you get to this step, you may need to first select an appropriate Joomla template, and proceed to install it. Joomla templates make it possible for you to change the appearance of your Joomla website, so that it looks exactly the way you want it to look. Some Joomla templates are available for free. Others are available at a fee. The most important thing is to select the best Joomla template for your website.

What are some of the things to consider when choosing Joomla templates? This is a question that comes up in forums where Joomla users exchange notes. The best way to answer this question is usually by highlighting the features that go into the making of a good Joomla template. That is exactly what I will now proceed to do. And that is where we come to learn that a good Joomla template is one that:

Is highly customizable: there are some Joomla templates that offer you great flexibility, in terms of the extent to which you can customize them. There are others that are rather rigid, with very limited options in terms of customizability. Obviously, you will be better off with a Joomla template that comes with a high degree of customizability. Otherwise you may find yourself in a situation where you want to do something with the template, and you find that you simply can’t (due to limited customizability).

That has good technical support: sometimes, you want to do something using the Joomla template, but you lack the know-how to do it. This is the point where you need technical support. With the best Joomla templates, you can get the technical support you need easily and conveniently. Sometimes, getting the necessary technical support turns out to be actually as easy as getting Securitas Epay talx paperless support. So the technical support for such templates is as good as the support offered to Securitas Epay users at securitasepay.com.

Is continually being updated: you know that Joomla is constantly being updated, to deal with the various emerging challenges. The best Joomla templates are the ones that in turn keep pace with the update needs.

Has good documentation: the best Joomla templates come with excellent documentation. Such documentation serves as a knowledgebase — to help you whenever you wish to do various things using the templates.

Looks good on all browsers: so this is a question of cross-browser compatibility. The best Joomla templates are (obviously) the ones with excellent cross-browser compatibility. You don’t want to end up with a template that looks great on one browser and awful on another. Remember, you will have no control over the browsers that the visitors to your website will be using to access the website.

There are some 5 interesting features in Joomla. These 5 are features that are not found in most of the other Content Management Systems (CMSs). Therefore, it is on account of these 5 features that you may find yourself opting to use Joomla, and not one of the other CMSs. With the other CMSs, you’d have to use plug-ins, and perhaps undertake quite a bit of (tedious and painstaking) coding and tinkering, in order to be able to do these 5 things. But Joomla is able to do these 5 things by default. Without further ado, the said 5 interesting features in Joomla include:

Page caching: this means that visitors to your website (which you will have created using Joomla) will be able to access the cached pages faster, in subsequent visits. During the initial visit, the pages are cached. In subsequent visits, the cached pages are used to speed up the loading process. This means that using Joomla as a CMS, you can even set up a portal like paycomonline. And this should be good news to developers, who operate under the impression that when one is creating a portal like paycomonline, they have to code everything from scratch.

Blog functionality: this makes it possible for you to set up a proper blog, attached to your main website. Therefore, your main website ends up having a ‘blog’ section.

Search functionality: this avails a search box to the people who visit your website (which you’ll have created using Joomla). This is a big deal. With certain other CMSs, you find yourself having to undertake a lot of coding, before you can make the websites to be searchable.

Printable page options: this is a very useful feature if, on your website, you will be presenting information that visitors may want to print for reference purposes.

News flash functionality: this, as the name suggests, can be a very useful feature for websites where visitors expect frequent updates. If you are using Joomla as the CMS, you can opt to present such updates to the website visitors in the form of news flashes. With certain other CMSs, setting up news flashes would require installation of intricate plug-ins. Alternatively it would require lots of coding, before getting it right. With Joomla, you can set up news flashes in less than 10 clicks.

Having opted to build and run your website using the Joomla Content Management System (CMS), you may find yourself being in need of Joomla plug-ins at some point. The plug-ins make it possible for you to extent Joomla’s basic functionality. Although Joomla is a sophisticated CMS, there are certain things that it is incapable of doing (in its basic implementation). Those are the things that necessitate the use of plug-ins. Having gotten to this point, where you have to use Joomla plug-ins, the (obvious) question that will arise is as to how you can get the plug-ins. That is the question I will attempt to answer, albeit briefly, in today’s article.

One way to get Joomla plug-ins is by downloading them from the web. There are numerous Joomla plug-ins available to be downloaded from the Internet. Some are meant to be downloaded for free. Others have to be paid for. To pay for a Joomla plug-in, you can just load some money into your Kroger personal finance debit card, and then transfer it online. You can subsequently use it to pay for the Joomla plug-in you need.

Another way to get Joomla plug-ins is by hiring someone to create them for you. You can, for instance, hire a freelancer to create the Joomla plug-in you need. Or you can hire a local developer to help you create the plug-in you need. Don’t fear. Some of these plug-ins don’t really cost too much money to create.

Yet another way to get Joomla plug-ins is by coding them yourself. If you have decent coding skills, there is absolutely no reason as to why you cannot create the necessary plug-ins is by yourself. After creating the plug-in and deploying it to do whatever your desired, you can subsequently publish it/avail it to the rest of the Joomla user community. That way, anyone else who needs to use it wouldn’t have to code it from scratch. That is how open source software communities thrive: by sharing what we manage to create in an altruistic spirit.

Why should anyone use a content management system like Joomla? That is a question I encounter in the course of the web development courses I teach. And it is an easy question to answer — because the benefits of using content management systems are pretty much obvious.

For one, a content management system such as Joomla makes web development work easier. With a good content management system, a task that would have caused you a headache is accomplished easily. Here, we have to keep it in mind that a good content management system converts web development, from being a coding task, to being a ‘drag and drop’ affair.

Secondly, a content management system such as Joomla saves you time, when creating websites. A task that would have taken a couple of hours is completed within five minutes, thanks to the power of a good content management system.

Thirdly, a content management system has potential to save you money, when creating a website. With good common sense, it becomes possible for someone who doesn’t know how to code to create a website. Armed with a content management system, you find that you may not have to pay a web developer to create a website for you (as you can do it by yourself). Or even if you have to pay a web developer to create the basic website, you can subsequently be able to update it by yourself, at no cost, through the content management system.

Fourthly, a content management system such as Joomla can help you come up with higher quality websites. That is, higher quality websites than what you’d get if you were doing the coding manually. You realize that some of the things you are able to do with help from a good content management system are things that you wouldn’t be able to do through manual coding. There are tasks you’d have shirked (on account of their complexity) if you were doing the coding manually. But with a content management system, such tasks look manageable, and you are able to perform them, leading to better quality output.